Curiosity

We can probably come up with various reasons why we run.  Common ones include numerous health benefits, which could bore someone to tears if we go on too long!, the friends and social contacts we make through our running, meeting the challenges of attaining particular race times, age-grading percentages, placing in the regional race series, or maybe just having something around which we can organize our days. All these reasons are worth keeping in mind.  But I find that list missing one thing that drives me – curiosity.

The word curiosity is derived from the Lain word, “cura,” which means to care or worry about something. Curiosity has both positive and negative implications. The saying “curiosity killed the cat” stems from the danger posed by excessive investigation.  For example, skating on a pond in early winter that looks to have sufficient ice. A more frivolous example is seeing a sign “Don’t Touch – Wet Paint,” leading us to finding out if it’s true. On the creative side, most learning stems from curiosity — we explore topics we’d like to know more about or become more expert in.  Life without curiosity-driven exploration would be pretty dull.

Continuing to run as we age is an ongoing experiment, or investigation: How much? How far? How fast? But at some level, for me those questions miss the point. A larger and more fundamental question is whether I will find the fire to stick with this thing that has been a big part of my life for many years, especially as the objective measures erode. Theories and training plans aimed at maintaining our running chops abound.  But these were not developed or written for a particular individual with a unique training, racing, and life history.  The hard truth is we’re on our own. But that’s OK.  It leaves us knowing it’s up to us to figure it out. 

So, curiosity plays a role.  Questions such as: “If I try this, will it lead that?”  “If not, what did it lead to?  Then, is that acceptable, or do I tinker? And so on.  As well as the larger question of whether the fire for running will continue to burn. About all of that, I am curious to find out!